Similarities, differences prove riveting

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Jared Loughner (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/U.S. MARSHAL'S OFFICE/ARCHIVES)

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Vince Li appears in a Portage la Prairie. court on August 5, 2008. (THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES)

The similarities between the Jared Loughner and Vince Li cases are riveting, as are their very different conclusions.

Loughner, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing six people in a January 2011 Arizona shooting. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Loughner's attack wounded several people, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, his intended target. The guilty plea allowed the 23-year-old college dropout to avoid the death penalty.

It also spared victims and their families the trauma of a trial.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Giffords and her husband welcomed the plea bargain.

"The pain and loss caused by the events of Jan. 8, 2011, are incalculable," Giffords said in a joint statement with her husband, Mark Kelly. "Avoiding a trial will allow us -- and we hope the whole Southern Arizona community -- to continue with our recovery."

In July 2008, Vince Li beheaded and cannibalized Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg. Li, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was found not criminally responsible during a March 2009 trial. At the time of McLean murder, the then 40-year-old Li was suffering from violent hallucinations and believed he was acting on orders from a higher power.

He was sent indefinitely to the Selkirk Metal Health Centre, where he has been undergoing extensive psychiatric treatment. In May, Li was granted temporary supervised passes from the hospital. That decision was greeting with outrage by many across Canada.

McLean's mother, Carol De Delly, told me in May she didn't support calls for Li's incarceration in the regular prison system or his deportation back to his native China. She wanted no part of the minority who wanted Li physically harmed.

"They want to take care of Vince Li and treat him humanely. Fine. No wonder he's showing vast improvements. Compared to what he was like, no kidding," she said.

"(But) he needs to be kept there. He needs to be in a secure locked facility for the rest of his life."

Loughner's guilty plea came after more than a year of forcible medication to control his schizophrenia. Li has no choice about taking his medicine while he's in Selkirk.

According to the AP, the judge in Loughner's case said the killer was a different person after medication and able to help his lawyers in his defence. Judge Larry Burns said that observing Loughner in court left "no question that he understands what's happening today."

Li has said he now remembers killing McLean and no longer hears voices. He expressed regret for the slaying.

Two different judicial systems, two very different results. Because Jared Loughner has been treated and found to be competent when he takes psychotropic drugs, he goes to jail. Because Vince Li has been treated and shows signs of improvement, he goes out for walks.

Unlike in the U.S., our justice system doesn't try mentally ill offenders after we drug and treat them long enough to declare them competent. Vince Li was found not criminally responsible for his crime. This may gall, but we're not going to get another shot at him because his meds are working.

We shouldn't. We have to accept the opinions of trained professionals who work closely with the likes of Li.

A judge believed Vince Li didn't know what he was doing when he killed. The Arizona judge believed the same thing about Jared Loughner. Their system allows them to find a person incapable of a crime because of mental illness and, when they're medicated enough to form sentences that don't involve fantasy, put them away.

I'm not comfortable with the idea of Vince Li one day anonymously living in my neighbourhood or yours. But I'm bewildered by a system that determines a person was too ill to understand committing a crime, puts him on medication and then punishes him as if he were competent during the murder.

It's one or the other, and in both these cases it's the other.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 8, 2012 A4